Eur. Phys. J. B (2015) 88: 84
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2015-60047-0

Regular Article

Google matrix analysis of the multiproduct world trade network

¹ Departamento de Física Teórica, GIyA, CNEA, Av. Libertador 8250, C1429 BNP Buenos Aires, Argentina
² Laboratoire de Physique Théorique du CNRS, IRSAMC, Université de Toulouse, UPS, 31062 Toulouse, France

^a e-mail: dima@irsamc.ups-tlse.fr

Received: 14 January 2015
Received in final form: 2 March 2015
Published online: 1 April 2015

Abstract

Using the United Nations COMTRADE database [United Nations Commodity Trade Statistics Database, available at: http://comtrade.un.org/db/. Accessed November (2014)] we construct the Google matrix G of multiproduct world trade between the UN countries and analyze the properties of trade flows on this network for years 1962−2010. This construction, based on Markov chains, treats all countries on equal democratic grounds independently of their richness and at the same time it considers the contributions of trade products proportionally to their trade volume. We consider the trade with 61 products for up to 227 countries. The obtained results show that the trade contribution of products is asymmetric: some of them are export oriented while others are import oriented even if the ranking by their trade volume is symmetric in respect to export and import after averaging over all world countries. The construction of the Google matrix allows to investigate the sensitivity of trade balance in respect to price variations of products, e.g. petroleum and gas, taking into account the world connectivity of trade links. The trade balance based on PageRank and CheiRank probabilities highlights the leading role of China and other BRICS countries in the world trade in recent years. We also show that the eigenstates of G with large eigenvalues select specific trade communities.